Prior to the New York Liberty’s season tip-off on May 14, the City’s summer hoops team acquired its newest member, Shoni Schimmel, from the Atlanta Dream for a future draft pick. Read up on the transaction below:

The New York Liberty has acquired All-Star point guard Shoni Schimmel from the Atlanta Dream in exchange for its 2017 second round draft pick, Team President Isiah Thomas announced today.

Schimmel, a 2014 WNBA First Round pick (No. 8 overall), two-time WNBA All-Star, and the Most Valuable Player of the 2014 All-Star Game, is a 3-point shooting threat and strong distributer of the basketball. In two WNBA seasons she has career averages of 8.0 ppg, 3.4 apg, and 1.5 3-pointers per game.

The Liberty’s historic 20th WNBA season opens on Saturday, May 14, when it will travel to Washington, D.C., to face the Washington Mystics at 7 p.m. New York’s home opener at Madison Square Garden, presented by Kia Motors, will be on Sunday, May 15, against the Dallas Wings at 5 p.m.

Shoni Schimmel knows Brittney Griner is 6-8. She knows she stands almost a full foot shorter, and was reminded of the fact when Griner swatted her layup in the first quarter of the WNBA All-Star game last Saturday.

But Schimmel wouldn’t back down, challenging Griner again in the fourth quarter. With her back turned to the rim, Schimmel threw up a dazzling shot over her head, just beyond Griner’s reach, for two of her All-Star game-record 29 points.

Over a year ago, she pulled that exact move on Griner to upset No. 1 Baylor in the Sweet 16 in what would become the highlight of the 2013 NCAA Tournament.

Schimmel’s life is much different now. The rookie for the Atlanta Dream isn’t a starter anymore. She isn’t the first, second or even third option on her team, either. She’s a spark off the bench, averaging 7.6 points and 3.7 assists in 20.3 minutes a night.

That’s why the move on Griner during the All-Star game was refreshing. We were finally seeing Shoni ‘Showtime’ Schimmel fully in her element again; the creative, flashy playmaker we’ve watched cross women left and right since her high school days in Oregon.

She looked comfortable. She looked like she was in the middle of a pickup game, passing the ball between her legs and behind her back, and pulling deep threes without hesitation.

Earning MVP honors with 29 points (seven threes) and 8 assists after starting just two games this season, Schimmel broke through, leading the East to a 125-124 overtime win.

“It’s definitely something I will remember for the rest of my life,” she says. “For me to kind of never really play like that before and to do it at such big of a stage with all the greats there, I hope it makes an impact on what I can bring to this league.”

She held up the MVP trophy on national television. She was trending on Twitter. She has the WNBA’s top-selling jersey.

But now almost a week removed from the high of it all, it’s back to the grind for Schimmel; back to her role in Atlanta as a reserve.

It’s an unfamiliar position for Schimmel, the eighth overall pick in the 2014 draft, who has always been the go-to player on every team she’s ever played on. For the last four years at Louisville, she was one of the top college point guards in the nation.

Now, she’s adjusting to making the most of erratic minutes. Sometimes she plays 25 minutes, other times she plays seven.

“At first I tried not to worry about it. Just to sit there and go out there and play basketball and have fun,” Schimmel says. “And then it just kind of kept going and I just didn’t really know how to handle it. It’s really frustrating, but at the same time, you know, if we’re winning, I can’t sit there and be mad about not starting or not playing much because you know, hey, at least we’re winning.”

The Dream (15-7) comfortably sit at first place in the East. All-Star vets Angel McCoughtry and Erika de Souza are leading an Atlanta team eager to return to the Finals after making three appearances in the last four years without a ring.

Schimmel is doing her part whenever she can.

Though her shooting percentage is down (just 37 percent from the field), she’s posted double figures nine times, including three 17-point games. She’s also dished out seven or more assists six times, including a 10 and 11-assist outing.

“Whenever Shoni’s number is called, Shoni’s ready,” says Karleen Thompson, who recently took over Dream head-coaching duties when Michael Cooper left on medical leave. “She’s sitting right beside me all the time so I can see that. She’s always ready, she’s watching the game, she’s a student of the game, she knows what’s needed when she gets in there. She’s just always ready.”

So what’s keeping her from the court? If Schimmel can perform like she did in the All-Star game against the likes of Diana Taurasi and Maya Moore, why can’t she see more time on her own team?

“Everyone knows that Coach Cooper sits on his defense. And that’s the one thing that Shoni has been working on, getting better at, to be able to come in and defend out there on the court. Her confidence is building in that. She’s working hard,” Thompson says.

“There are big things in store for Shoni’s future. Everyone can see that,” Thompson continues. “But that would probably be the one thing that I think that Shoni is really taking the time to get better at.”

Schimmel is specifically working on her one-on-one defense. She wants to be able to contain the elite players in the league, not just be able to break them down with a single crossover and get to the basket.

Every day she works on her agility, using ladders to develop more quickness to help with sliding laterally so she can better stay in front of whoever she’s guarding.

This isn’t the first time Schimmel has had to make adjustments. The same questions that followed her as she transitioned from high school to college ball follow her now as she adapts to the pros: Is she too ‘streetball,’ too ‘showy,’ to thrive at this level?

“A lot of people would say she’s not going to be able to be successful with the way she plays in college, there’s too much razzle dazzle, too much showboating,” says Schimmel’s former coach at Louisville, Jeff Walz. “But it’s not trying to change someone’s game, it’s just trying to adapt it to what you’re trying to do and what you can get the most out of that player and I think that’s what Shoni’s been willing to do.

“When she came here, we didn’t try to change her game, we wanted to just educate her. Know when to make the behind the back pass, know when to make the no look pass, or when to simply make a bounce pass. She was willing to do that and I think that’s why her game has continued to progress. We didn’t want to take away her flair, her charisma. That’s the thing that’s good for our game, and I don’t think Atlanta wants to do that either.”

In her first game back from the All-Star game on Tuesday, Schimmel played 31 minutes off the bench in a 112-108 double-overtime loss to the Lynx. She scored 17 points (including 5 threes) and had 8 assists.

Maybe the tide is beginning to turn for her. Maybe she’s inching closer to securing a more prominent role. But even if Schimmel didn’t play half as many minutes against the Lynx, she would probably still be in the gym working on defensive slides or three-point shots right now.

“I want to go out there and be one of the best,” Schimmel says. “This whole transformation to college to the WNBA has been crazy. I haven’t had much time to sit there and let it sink in with everything going on. I’m trying to learn everything, trying to sit there and do whatever I need to do to continue to keep growing as a player.”

Starting lineups for the 2014 WNBA All-Star Game were announced Tuesday night. Minnesota forward Maya Moore led all players in total votes, while sophomore standouts Skylar Diggins and Brittney Griner were also

Starting lineups for the 2014 WNBA All-Star Game were announced Tuesday night. Minnesota forward Maya Moore led all players in total votes, while sophomore standouts Skylar Diggins and Brittney Griner were also voted to start for the Western Conference.

Elena Delle Donne led all Eastern Conference vote-getters for the second year in a row, but may not play in the All-Star game due to complications with Lyme Disease. Indiana forward Tamika Catchings will be making her ninth All-Star appearance despite having played just two games this season. Atlanta rookie Shoni Schimmel finished third overall in total votes despite averaging just 7.8 points this season.

No doubt there will be plenty more reasons to watch the WNBA this summer. Make sure you catch the WNBA in action tonight, as the Stars and Dream do battle at 7:30 p.m. EST on NBA TV. In the meantime, enjoy these snapshots from WNBA media day taken over the past week!

Louisville’s Shoni Schimmel continues to be one of the most exciting players in women’s college basketball, most recently scoring 25 points, grabbing 8 boards and dishing 5 assists in a 93-52 route over the Houston Cougars. Back when she was a dominant high school prospect, SLAM documented Schimmel’s stellar play in SLAM 136. We weren’t the only ones to take notice of her talent and interesting story—in 2011, director Jonathan Hock released Off the Rez, a film about Schimmel’s budding basketball career and her life on the Umatilla Indian Reservation. The documentary originally aired on TLC, and on January 24 it’s getting a digital re-release. You can pre-order it now on iTunes, and for more information on the film, check out its Facebook page.

Finally responding to Shoni Schimmel’s great play—and the interest her background and play have created—Discovery Communications has decided to air SLAM friend Jon Hock’s awesome film about Shoni and her family.

The movie, Off the Rez, aired once in 2011 on TLC but hasn’t been seen since. Discovery is rectifying this to some degree by airing it tomorrow night at 6 p.m. on Discovery Fit & Health. No, we hadn’t heard of the channel either, but Wiki says it’s in 49 million homes. If you’re gonna watch the Louisville-UConn game tomorrow night and you get that channel, we’d advise you peep the movie first.

Following an impressive win over Tennessee this past Tuesday night, Shoni Schimmel and the Louisville Cardinals are headed to the 2013 Final Four. Schimmel is incredibly fun to watch and we were up on her story early, publishing the feature below back in SLAM 136 (April, 2010). There was also a movie about Schimmel produced by Hock Films in 2011, but after airing just once on TLC, it has yet to be aired again. (Hopefully that’ll change soon!) Enjoy the SLAM 136 story below and look for Schimmel and the Cards as they take on Cal in New Orleans Sunday night.—Ed.

The plush gym on the outskirts of Portland is packed for the Interstate Shootout. The general reason for the crowds is the chance to watch some of the region’s best female high school players heat up the hardwood. The more specific reason for the presence of texting teens and college coaches is to catch The Shoni Schimmel Show in action.

While channeling her inner Professor, Schimmel, Franklin High’s 5-9 senior point guard, pushes a three-on-two fast break, brings the ball around her back twice and finishes with a right-handed sling pass to her sister Jude—a fundamentally sound 5-6 junior guard—cutting in from her left for a layup. The air fills with oohs and ahhs. But for Shoni, it is basically another play in a basketball game.

“I kind of go with the flow,” says the 17-year-old Schimmel, who ranks as one of the top prospects in the country and is considering offers from Oregon, Louisville, UCLA, California, Rutgers and Oklahoma, while Colorado, Michigan State, Washington and South Carolina remain options.

“I just play. I don’t think about it. I just go out there and do it.”

Shoni’s story is easily unrivaled. It’s where the vintage AND 1 Mixtape Tour meets Sherman Alexie and produces a passion for the game and love of her Native American heritage.

Last November, before Shoni’s junior year, her family moved off the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian reservation after Shoni’s mother, Ceci Moses, took the head coaching job with the Franklin Quakers. Before transferring from Hermiston High School in Eastern Oregon, Schimmel led the Bulldogs to second place at the 5A state tournament in 2008.

So when Moses—a former community college player and mother of eight children—chose a new life for her family off the reservation, she also inherited a program with a measly four wins the previous two years.

With the move, Shoni did more than overcome a Native American stereotype by adjusting to life off the reservation: She helped turn Franklin into a contender.

In her first year, flashing an array of no-look passes, crossovers and NBA-length three-pointers in an open-court offense that would make Mike D’Antoni blush, Shoni led the Quakers to a 21-5 record and the Portland Interscholastic League (PIL) state tourney for the first time in school history.

“My goal was to win five games our first year. Seriously, five,” says Moses, laughing at the notion. “But we make people believe. I want my girls to know this is about more than just basketball. This is about life.”

Shoni’s basketball life began at the age of 4 when she started playing in community youth tournaments on the reservation. By middle school, she was running against her older brother Shae, whom Shoni credits with molding her game thanks to some AND 1 mixtapes. Soon, “Sho” was traveling with her mom’s AAU team and showcasing the freestyle flow she plays with today.

“I’m more like a ‘rez ball’ player. I just go out there and whatever happens, happens,” Shoni begins nonchalantly. “On the rez, it’s really different because you just play pick-up games. You win, you stay on. But this kind of basketball is more organized. People are more situated. It’s different, but I’m the same because I just go out there and play.”

Rick Schimmel, Shoni’s father and an assistant at Franklin, says his daughter “feels a lot of ownership and knows the focus is on her and does not want to fail, disappoint or let people down. At the same time, she wants to be in control.”

Shoni’s basketball and athletic roots run deep. Much like her mother, Shoni’s grandmother and great-grandmother played basketball on the reservation and have passed on tales of being allowed only two dribbles. Shoni is also the granddaughter of Rollin Schimmel, a renowned NAIA wrestler in Eastern Oregon. Now, Shoni and Jude proudly represent the rez off and on the floor.

“She’s like my right-hand man,” Shoni says of her younger sister, who was the PIL 6A Player of the Year last season after Shoni missed seven weeks with an ankle injury. “We’ve played with each other since we were little. We like knowing each other are there.”

Thanks to the Schimmel sisters, Franklin is back in the winning business. A month into the ’09-10 season, Shoni is averaging better than 40 ppg, including a 48-point game in which she hit 11 three-pointers. “Most of the time, I can tell it’s going in when it leaves my hand,” says the girl many consider a female incarnation of “Pistol” Pete Maravich.

Still, Shoni remains immune to the limelight, even while wearing a battery pack and microphone as part of her daily attire. Since leaving the reservation, the Schimmel family’s life has been captured by Hock Films, whose namesake Jonathan Hock famously documented Sebastian Telfair’s rise from the projects to the pros in the ’05 film, Through the Fire.

“Shoni takes it in stride. She knows this movie isn’t going to give meaning to her life that otherwise isn’t there,” explains Hock, who will condense roughly 350 hours of footage into a 90-minute feature, Off the Rez, this summer before entering it into various film festivals.

Minutes after another Franklin victory, Shoni leans against a tan brick wall in a suburban high school hallway with a video camera peering from afar. As she deflects steady praise with a signature smile, her coach and mother, Ceci, casually interrupts an impromptu interview by telling Shoni it’s time to go.

You’ll have a hard time finding a bigger upset in Women’s NCAA history that what was witnessed over the weekend when 16 seed Louisville took down Defending champion Baylor in Brittney Griner’s final college game, 82-81. Louisville played at an otherworldly level on defense, locking Griner up so tightly that her first bucket didn’t come until 5 minutes into the 2nd half. Meanwhile, Shoni Schimmel put up this excellent shot over Griner.

Shoni Schimmel streaks down the left side of the court, her long brown ponytail bouncing in the air behind her. At full speed, she uses her right hand to wrap the ball behind her back and through her legs, before gently laying it off the backboard with her left. Her defenders, now a few steps behind her, never stood a chance.

Schimmel is from the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon. Situated a few miles outside of Pendleton and just north of the Blue Mountains; Umatilla is home to around three thousand Native Americans. For Shoni, it is also her proving ground. She plays ‘rez ball,’ a ferocious, attacking style of basketball, fueled by passion, creativity and relentless aggressiveness. It is this flare and fearlessness that has resulted in many declaring Schimmel the second coming of Pistol Pete Maravich. A comparison that, while initially seeming improbable, is startlingly accurate.

With her junior year approaching, Shoni’s mother, Ceci, (they are left to right in photo) was offered a coaching position at Portland’s Franklin high school. Seeing this as an opportunity to chase a dream and battle against generations of oppression and bigotry, Shoni and her family leave the reservation and embark on a battle that tests their strength, spirit and tenacity.

Eight-time Emmy award winner and long-time friend of SLAM’s, Jonathan Hock (learn more about him at hockfilms.com) documents the journey in Off the Rez and caught up with SLAM this past week.

SLAM: You’ve done work in baseball, football and wrestling, but the majority of your work has been focused on basketball, why is your passion so strong for the sport?

Jonathan Hock: Basketball players aren’t hidden behind helmets like football players, or are a mile away from you on the field like baseball players. It’s a sport where a player’s passion is so close at hand, and when the stakes for are so high for the player and her family, as they are for Shoni or as they were for Sebastian and his family in Through the Fire, that other sports can’t match it.

SLAM: How did you first hear about Shoni?

JH: Nelson Hernandez, who became a producer on the film, was a graduate of Lincoln High School and a fan of Through the Fire. He was out west running a Native American youth organization, and with basketball as big in Indian Country as it is in the hood, he was very plugged into the incredible talent in the Native American community. In the aftermath of the terrible killings at the Red Lake Reservation in Minnesota, Nelson was organizing a youth conference there and got in touch with me to ask if he could show “Through the Fire” at the conference as an inspiration to the kids. A couple of years later, Nelson told me that he had found the next Through the Fire story on a reservation in Oregon. I flew out to meet Shoni and her family, and found the same love and passion in them—and the same kind of incredible basketball genius in the high school player—as we found in Coney Island.

SLAM: The film captures the struggles faced by the family and the tenacity and courage it takes to pack up and move in hopes of achieving a goal – where does that courage stem from?

JH: Shoni clearly draws courage from her mom, Ceci Moses. Ceci is has a strong, clear-headed awareness of how history and society are aligned against her people, in obvious ways and in more subtle ways that people from the “outside world” don’t really notice. But Ceci does not back down when she confronts adversity—sometimes it seems like she’s trying to undo 400 years of oppression every game—and I don’t think Shoni knows how to back down either.”

SLAM: Did you see similarities in the social and economic challenges faced by Shoni and her family in comparison to the issues faced by Sebastian Telfair and his family in Through the Fire?

JH: I think our society as a whole is set up in a way to keep the people oppressed on the reservation and in the inner city ghettos. Geographically, psychologically, economically, the system that we operate under is set up to keep those people there while the people with the resources and the power keep what they have. In recent decades, people in the hood have been able to break out of the invisible walls that enclose the ghettos, though the odds against them are still huge. On the reservation, the invisible wall that separates them from the outside world is even more impenetrable. So to try to break out of the psychological and economic confines of the reservation is so difficult, especially if you want to do it on your own terms, without compromising who you are or what you represent. That’s what Shoni’s family was trying to do, and it was very inspiring to watch.

SLAM: When you first approached Shoni and her family, were they receptive to the idea or did it take some convincing?

JH: They were receptive to the idea of spreading a good message for their people,but there was some level of distrust that had to be overcome. Here’s a white guy from the east coast and I’m not sure it was easy for them to trust me. Historically, they certainly had every justification to be suspicious. But as a filmmaker I believe you try to let your empathy for the subject guide you—you don’t impose some pre-ordained ideology or let some political agenda box you into your story. We were open to their truth, and after a while they came to understand that on some level, I think, and we were able to break through.

SLAM: Was that initial distrust the biggest obstacle you faced in making this film?

JH: I think so. You need your subject to trust you when your sitting in their living room or kitchen or locker room with a camera.

SLAM: How important is basketball for the youth on the reservations?

JH: On the rez, they talk about basketball as a way to battle for their tribe’s dignity. To take your best five and travel to another reservation or take on some team from the outside, that’s a tremendous source of pride for them. And it makes the game matter so much.

SLAM: Why did you want to tell this story?

JH: Partly, I wanted to shine a light on the forgotten hood. The reservation is just another manifestation of the hood in America, only it exists so far out of the light of the mainstream that people don’t know about it. I didn’t know much about it, but I was curious, and I found a family that believed in something and was trying to accomplish something I could relate to. So I just stayed with it and now, two and a half years later, we have the movie.

SLAM: Are you still in contact with Shoni?

JH: Oh yeah, we went down to see her at Louisville and shoot a little this season, and I speak with her dad Rick regularly. You don’t put the cameras down and just move on. I actually was just exchanging text messages with Jamel Thomas, Sebastian’s brother, this morning, and we stopped filming Through the Fire in 2004. You develop a relationship when you work with people and when you respect them and they respect you, the relationship doesn’t end the day you stop production.

SLAM: Because of the intimate nature of making a documentary, do you find you have to try and emotionally remove yourself from the process?

JH: The opposite actually. Don’t be afraid to let your emotions be present when you shoot. Steve Sabol, my mentor at NFL Films, taught me not to be afraid to feel deeply for your subject. Follow your heart when you shoot, not your head, and you’ll get at a deeper truth.

Off the Rez is a richly layered film, one that captures the emotional toll of an athlete carrying the hopes of a community while also being part of a family struggling to make ends meet. The film offers a glimpse into the realities of being a member of an often overlooked minority and touches on universal themes of equality and subjugation, while also providing an inside perspective to the realities of being one of the best high school basketball players in America.

Off the Rez will be debuting at the Tribeca Film Festival tomorrow, April 26th and premiering on TLC Saturday May 14 at 9 p.m. EDT.